Night Unbound(89)

“And it never occurred to you that I might simply want a little privacy?”
“I wish to hell it had. You think I wanted to see you . . . like that . . . with him?”
“Oh, please. Like what you just saw was any worse than what Étienne and I overheard the first time we spent the night at your place after you and Jenna married.”
Richart turned to face them and frantically drew a hand back and forth across his neck.
Jenna gasped. “What?” When she turned to Lisette and Zach, her face flamed with color. “You could hear us?” she asked, voice high with mortification.
Zach looked down at Lisette in time to see her bite her lip. As much as she must have wanted to shove it down her brother’s throat, she clearly did not want to embarrass Jenna. Not any more than she already had, anyway.
Jenna looked up at Richart. “You said you soundproofed our bedroom because I was having trouble sleeping with my new heightened hearing.”
“I did.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“And . . . because Étienne said they could hear us when we made love,” he finished miserably.
Jenna covered her face with her hands. “Richart! Why didn’t you tell me they could hear us?”
“I wasn’t thinking about them when we made love. How could I? I was so caught up in you and your delectable body that it didn’t even occur to me that they might hear us.”
“I am never going to be able to look your siblings in the eyes again without blushing.”
He took Jenna’s wrists and tried to pull her hands away from her face. “Oh, come on, sweetheart. It’s not that bad,” he cajoled. “We just caught Lisette down on her knees with Zach’s cock in her mouth, and she isn’t blushing.”
Zach bit back a bark of laughter.
Through gritted teeth, Lisette said, “I’ll blush as soon as the desire to decapitate you has passed.”
Zach held up his hands in a placating gesture. “All right. All right. So everyone is embarrassed . . . except for me. I’m just very, very frustrated.”
Lisette elbowed him.
Jenna lowered her hands and offered him a tentative smile.
“Since I’m playing problem solver again tonight,” Zach went on, “why don’t I simply bury everyone’s memory of this, send Richart and Jenna back to wherever they came from, and Lisette and I can go back to what we were doing?”
“Zach,” Lisette warned.
“Fine. I won’t bury anyone’s memories. Can I still send Richart and Jenna back to wherever they came from so we can go back to what we were doing?”
Jenna laughed.
Richart relaxed.
Lisette just shook her head. “I think that ship has sailed.”
Zach groaned.
“That’s just wrong,” Richart said.
Lisette gaped at him. “After you just . . . And all that bitching and moaning . . . You can’t . . .” She clenched her teeth. “Tell me again why you’re here?”
In much calmer tones, Richart repeated, “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“So? I let it go to voice mail all the time.”
“So, a week ago you were incapacitated by a tranquilizer dart and we nearly lost you.”
“Oh.” All hostility fled. “Right.”
“When you didn’t answer your phone,” Richart continued, “I feared you had been sedated again. So I called Zach and mistook the strain in his voice for anger.”
Zach frowned. “You thought I’d harmed her?”
Richart shrugged. “I don’t know you, Zach. I have no idea what you are or aren’t capable of or how you treat Lisette when the rest of us aren’t around.”
And Lisette had once had a husband-turned-vampire who had beaten her on a regular basis. All without her brothers’ knowledge.
They hadn’t learned the truth until the night her husband had turned her.
Well, that killed Zach’s erection.
Wrapping an arm around Lisette, he drew her into his side. “In the future, when you call to inquire about her, I will endeavor to be more specific.”
“But not too specific,” Richart requested with a smile.
Zach laughed.
Lisette sighed. “Unless I’m fighting vampires, I’ll start answering my phone whenever it rings. At least until we’ve conquered this new enemy.”
“Thank you.”
“Anyone else smell that?” Jenna asked suddenly, her nose wrinkling.
Lisette looked down at her shirt. “What? The blood on my clothing?”
Zach shook his head. “The vampires headed our way.”
Though Jenna was younger than anyone else present, she had been transformed by Roland at Richart’s request. So, like Sarah, she had the power of a nearly millennium-old immortal and was far stronger and faster than the French siblings, with more acute senses.